Thursday, July 7

By this point we had officially run out of things to do in Dubai. Still the guys were leaving tomorrow morning and I had a wedding to attend in the evening, and so we didn't feel too peed off. The guys wanted to buy gold and gifts so we spent the morning in the Gold Souk hunting for jewelry.

At around 1:30pm, my mum called. This in itself wasn't unusual; since I had a local SIM we had spoken at least once or twice each day so far. This time she called for the specific reason to reassure me that my dad was ok, and that he had made it into work before the poo hit the London Transport fan. At that point the official story was still regarding power cuts, but there had been rumours about blasts too. I tend to shrug these things off until I have more information and since my dad was ok we just carried on looking for something to eat.

In the restaurant, we started getting more of the facts, specifically that there had been blasts (six at that point) at various stations and on buses in London. Getting through to London was impossible at that time and so we only had text messages to rely on to get more info. Things got a bit hairy after a sister of my friend (who was on her way to Russel Square) was not contactable, but she soon got into contact with her family so that was ok too.

At that point the only thing to do was to head back to the hotel to watch the events unfold on the telly. I wasn't sure whether to be glad or gutted that I missed the whole affair - London is my home and this was an important part of its history that I wasn't being a part of*. The lines to London were still jammed when a friend, with quite a lot of consideration, called reassuring me that all was ok their end.

I left for the wedding in Sharjah a few hours later. After Monday I was looking forward to it even more and so I arrived a bit early to help set things up (not that there was much to do. They obviously had a professional wedding planner or something. Ahem). In a nutshell (hey, there's only so much I can say about a wedding), it was a terrifically understated, pretentious- and issueless affair where all one could do is enjoy themselves.

It was there that I met the Forest Gate Gang (or alternatively "the cousins") who were fab, The Cambridge High Crew who were equally fab and a few other guys, including the groom. It seemed that this family couldn't help but attract a whole bunch of nice people.

But yet again the day had to end. In my mind this was the last time I'd be seeing these guys and so I tried to drag out leaving as much as possible (which was kinda hard actually), but then for some bizarre reason I was invited over for breakfast the next morning. Initially I hesitated, after all my friends were leaving the next day, Jummah had to be fitted in, and it would be pretty tough making it to Sharjah for breakfast... Wouldn't it?

* The time for commentary has kinda passed, and all that was needed to be said regarding the bombings was said.